Not long ago I was in Wal-Mart with my parents (because I’m cool like that) And was looking through the various underthings available when I thought of something.

I’m a grown woman, looking through bras, fingering the cups and such.

If I were a pervert or some kind of fetishist, no one would ever know.

Because I’m a woman.

And it’s not because I was where the women’s underbits were; I could have been in the men’s section, or the children’s section, and people would assume I’m shopping for a husband or child. I browsed in the men’s section and there was some pretty neat underwear over there, I wouldn’t mind having a pair of Batman undies. You just don’t find that sort of thing in the women’s section.

I could make these look GOOD.

They would never know if I was some sort of social deviant, but would assume I was on a perfectly normal errand.

My father, a somewhat scruffy man with a beard and large glasses, would be labeled a pervert if he had been alone in the lingerie section, even if he was on a perfectly legitimate errand.

Ditto for the children’s section. With no actual child present, a lone man browsing through the Tinkerbelle panties would be labeled some sort of child molester, even if only in the minds of those who saw them.

A woman = “Ah, that’s normal, nothing to see there.”

A man = “Pervert. I’m gonna do a search of the sex offenders registry when I get home.”

Like this:

Related

7 Comments:

You know, I never actually thought about it until you brought it up. There are countless double standards out in the world but some of them, you just don’t notice some of them because they are so integrated into our life.
By the way, I love the Batman underwear

It’s monumentally unfair! I have to do all my little kid and girl undie shopping online now. Or cut pictures out of the Target and Wal-Mart catalogues for my wall collage in my basement. Pfft. I thought this was America. Wait. Did I say that out loud. Just kidding.

Seriously, I was kidding. It was a joke. Come on guys. Believe me. You have to believe me! Ok, that’s enough of that. But I was kidding.

My grandfather crocheted, he taught Mom and she taught me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a man wanting to learn how to do something normally considered “women’s work” or vice-versa. I took shop in high school (the only girl to do so in the teacher’s memory) but gaining the ability to operate a lathe did not somehow remove my uterus and replace it with a set of testicles. (I checked.)

I feel that people are people and have the same capacity for evil and goodness regardless of what sort of internal plumbing they have.